CHAPTER 5 RESEARCH FINDINGS
5.5 How understanding inclusive education as ideology could contribute
assigned to teachers to attempt to overcome barriers to learning in their teaching practice.
However, in responses to personal views on the applicability and responsibility of applying inclusive education in practice, a line is drawn by half the sample group with regard to specific subject fields. There are therefore limitations envisioned based on the type of subject or knowledge sets that are involved. Also, from the pre-service teacher sample group, the majority of the group also indicated that inclusive education as a responsibility should be dependent on the type of school the teachers find themselves in.
Consequently, for both the pre-service teacher and lecturer group, half of the sample groups indicate that they do not see a place for inclusive education when it comes to specific subjects or knowledge sets. Also, that responsibility cannot be placed on teachers to apply inclusive education in those contexts. Triangulation is achieved between the literature study, the SLR and the quantitative results with respect to parties responsible for inclusive education’s application not addressing inclusive education as a general pedagogy or as a troublesome addition to established teaching practices. Even though there isn’t specific mention made in the questionnaire as to which subjects or knowledge sets respondents imagine the standard applies to, the data indicates that a great section of the two population groups do not view inclusive education as a general pedagogical approach. Both epistemically and ethically, a limit for inclusive education as pedagogical practice is assigned based on the expected requirements of the established education practice. A predetermined standard is set as a predicate that requires a specific learner who will be able to benefit from that specific kind of subject and knowledge set. This is further exacerbated by a large section of the pre-service teaching group also indicating that inclusive education practice is a responsibility dependent on the type of school the teacher finds themselves employed at. For the pre-service teacher group, therefore, further entrenchment of the idea of separate practices for traditionalist and inclusive education is apparent.
5.5 How understanding inclusive education as ideology could contribute to its
learner meeting the benchmarks as set by the system, and not how the system could adapt to promote development of an empowered learner.
Critical pedagogy, as with inclusive education, sees the marginalised as part of society and education’s responsibility as one of empowerment of all for the transformation of their world (Freire, 1993). Knowledge in this framework is a co-creational event, between learners and between learners and the teacher, so as to empower learners to critically reflect upon their world and develop a conscious intentionality, as well as skills and abilities, for grappling with reality (Freire, 1993). For both inclusive education and critical education, knowledge can only be effectively and relevantly explored and accurately constructed if the social milieu within which the process occurs is representative of the society the learners find themselves in. Also, as is the case for inclusive education, the emergent ethics of critical pedagogy lies in its centralised purpose of empowerment of learners to take part in and to shape their world (Freire, 1993). For inclusive education, however, it would include a teaching practice that actively aims at overcoming barriers to learning.
The key feature of Freire’s work in terms of ideological roots, is the implications of the endorsed pedagogical approach’s epistemological and ethical foundations. As a consequence of banking education’s system- and teacher-orientated approach, Freire argues that the epistemological consequence is that education devolves into a process for representing and endorsing a static world (1993). Education becomes the tool for sustaining a world of invested interests, instead of the tool for empowerment of learners. It is damning in the sense that the epistemological success of teaching is then seated in its ability to sustain the status quo, an external benchmark that is separate from the individual and drained of the potential for the application of knowledge for navigation and participation in their immediate environment. It redefines knowledge construction from a typical human activity, of which the very potential is dependent on human interest and creativity, to a repetitious act for mirroring the established body of knowledge. The ethics embedded in this pedagogical approach is the active sustaining of the established order and practices for the purpose of determining the learners’ place therein. Learners are made to fit, or moved around until they are fit in somewhere or are forgotten by the greater system. It is no wonder Freire thought of these practices as a ‘lifeless’ pedagogy (1993, p. 52), for the learner is not seen or invited as an active participant and applies pedagogy as an instrument that is not reflective of the parties that are immediately involved therein.
Contrary to this, critical pedagogy and inclusive education reflect different ideological roots.
Critical pedagogy is also referred to as dialogical education, so as to describe the co-creational role and active participation of the participants in the pedagogy (Freire, 1993). The central tenet for critical pedagogy and inclusive education is therefore the inclusion of the learner in the
teaching and learning process. The aim of these pedagogies is to enable learners in developing the necessary knowledge and skills to productively contribute to their societies by placing the learner and their interests at the centre of their own learning. Pedagogical practices are to be adapted in order for the learner, in collaboration with peers and the educator, to form meaningful connections with content knowledge. The question the educator therefore asks is not, “Who are engaging with the lesson in class?”, but “How can teaching practices be adapted to involve learners actively and meaningfully in class?”. Ethically, there is therefore a call on the educator and the education system to include learners physically as well as in terms of their meaningful participation in their learning.
A counterpoint that could be launched at this division is that it is an unfair assessment of what education practitioners are attempting to achieve with traditionalist teaching practice. The educators are taking up a mantle of responsibility to train learners the necessary skill to participate in the world. It does not follow that these teachers are nefarious actors who apply practices simply to establish the social order or to protect a position of power. From Freire’s argument (1993), however, and why it is important to detangle the ideological roots and its implications, the inevitable consequence of this practice is a static epistemological world where creative and critical human ingenuity is supplanted with subservient placement, i.e. a docile and uncritical fulfilment of the status quo that is not necessarily in service of the agent’s interests. Another way to describe especially how epistemological processes differ between the two pedagogical approaches, is in the unpacking of the diverging focus on development for an end and development of learner abilities. In traditionalist education practices, teaching and learning is aimed to reach a standardised end, training for a specific purpose that is not immediately tied to the learner’s person or milieu. For inclusive education, teaching and learning is performed first and foremost for the development of the learner’s abilities to engage with their world. While the former could secure behaviours and responses that could meet specific ends, it does not ensure that development occurred in terms of the learner gaining the required knowledge and skills to meaningfully engage with their world. On the other hand, by shifting the focus to the primacy of the development of the learner’s ability to engage meaningfully with knowledge and skills, their investment in their own training is enhanced and the function of training for ends consequently has greater individual and collective value for learners.
Therefore, by viewing inclusive education as an ideology, we are enabled to re-evaluate its pedagogical implications in terms of its established epistemological- and ethical roots. In comparison with established pedagogical practices inclusive education comes up against, and the ideology these practices entrenches, the applicability of inclusive education is highlighted.
Contrary to traditionalist epistemology, inclusive education promotes a teaching practice that is
learner-centred and focused on actual learner empowerment in the subjects they are taught.
Pedagogy’s purpose in this context is not primarily meeting a standardised end separate from the learner, but contextually relevant and meaningful development of knowledge and skills. Therein lies the ethical roots for inclusive education as well, a responsibility to empower learners so as to be enabled to individually and collectively contribute to their communities and society as a whole.
A responsibility then follows for teachers and the greater education system as a whole to build systems and practices of inclusion that are aimed at overcoming barriers to learning.
A warning is issued by education practitioners that this approach would mean the inclusion of learners who are confronted with barriers that cannot be overcome in the mainstream, leading to lost time to focus on the majority of learners not experiencing severe barriers and actively harming the learner who is confronted with the barrier from gaining meaningful tuition (Andrews et al., 2019; Geldenhuys & Wevers, 2013; Materechera, 2020; Potgieter-Groot et al., 2012). However, what inclusive education proposes, as seen in its epistemological- and ethical roots, is that a generalised inclusive pedagogy be adopted. The premise therefore is that a general inclusive pedagogical approach, which is imbedded on an epistemology of empowerment through practices of inclusivity, would enable learners to overcome barriers to learning and thereby engage more productively and gain more from teaching - in the mainstream or otherwise.
It is also important to note that specialised support systems and settings are not dissolved in inclusive education policy (Department of Education, 1997). With an inclusive education pedagogical practice endorsed, the conclusion is that the learners who experience serious barriers to learning would find the support that they actually need. As a matter of fact, all learners would find the support they need. However, the first order of business is not the diagnosing for placement in specialised settings, but the collective education system promoting diverse teaching practices focussed on overcoming barriers to learning and engaging learners meaningfully. In the articles reviewed in the SLR, it was repeatedly noted that educators indicated that they were saddled with a burden due to the inclusion of learners experiencing barriers to learning (cf.
4.3.4.1.iv – vii). However, it was reported that adjusted teaching practices were omitted by teachers and not even considered a strategy to overcome barriers to learning, systemic or otherwise (Engelbrecht & Savolainen, 2018; Engelbrecht et al., 2017; Geldenhuys & Wevers, 2013; Maebana & Themane, 2019; Maguvhe, 2015; Mncube & Lebopa, 2019; Potgieter-Groot et al., 2012). As one researcher commented, teachers revert to what was called ‘classical teaching’
if support systems are not in place to take on learners experiencing barriers to learning (Engelbrecht & Savolainen, 2018) – the typical teacher-orientated approach ascribed to traditionalist pedagogy.
The opportunity to deliver a cost-effective way of implementing an education system responsive to all learners, as argued in EWP6 (Department of Education, 1997), is therefore missed. Instead of implementing inclusive education practices as the standard, and not opting for displacement due to barriers to learning that require specialist care as the exception, the result is an educative practice that forces learners to fit the standard or otherwise be frustratingly tolerated as present in classrooms, considered not capable of learning and destined to be moved to an ‘appropriate’
environment or to fail. Inclusive education does not remove the existence of specialised support, but orientates the system to first address barriers to learning that can be overcome in the mainstream before considering removing learners and placing them in settings for highly specialised care. It places the ethical responsibility for supporting the learning of all learners on the greater education community, instead of fostering a system that accepts the ‘norm’ and isolates the ‘marginals’.
From Finding 8 of the SLR (cf. 4.3.4.1), voices of teachers are heard that actually attempted inclusive education practices. A more recent occurrence is the increase of studies that are reporting on the successes of inclusive education practices of diverse teaching, albeit after intervention projects for promotion of these practices. A salient feature is the teachers in these circumstances reporting more active participation from their own side and increased confidence in their own abilities to teach all learners (eg. Mphahlele, 2020). This, however, demonstrates the effect of meaningful teaching practices alluded to by both Freire (1993) and Brantlinger (1997).
When education practices are set up as events where the parties involved are active participants in the creation of knowledge and the development of skills, it is more meaningful to all participants and education becomes a process of empowerment (cf. 2.3). For Freire, this is the dividing line between pedagogy of lifelessness and a pedagogy of humanisation (Freire, 1993); in inclusive education terms, the dividing line between an education of diagnoses and an education for learning for all.